The Inspector Walter Darriteau Murder Mysteries - Books 1-4 David Carter (autobiographies to read txt) 📖

some were calling their friends and family; some idiots were taking pictures of dead Jeff, bloodied and on his back, couldn’t wait to get them on their Bookface site before anyone else. Live murder in graphic colour, online and fresh, it’s amazing what the modern world had to offer, you wouldn’t believe it!

Neil ran to the stage. Couldn’t comprehend what he saw. His guitar was ruined. Two slugs gone clean through it; right through dopey Jeff as well; and clean into the wall at the back.

‘Who did it?’ asked Neil.

‘Never seen him before,’ said the black guy, ‘some young white piece of shit.’

Neil glanced at the other two. They pursed their lips and shook their heads and peered down at dead Jeff. What the fuck was going on?

The sound of sirens floated in through the door. Police? Ambulance? Maybe both. Sissy was bent over the bar, crying. She’d lose her licence, she was certain of that, and she had big bills to pay, and bigger loans to service, and some of them from not so nice people.

Some of the guys who didn’t want to be interviewed by the coppers were scurrying away. But too late.

The cops were already there, surrounding the place.

Two armed response units, plus four unarmed officers, rounding everybody up, setting up temporary barriers, tapes across the exits, keeping the nosey parkers out, keeping the witnesses in. No one would be allowed to leave until their details had been taken and checked, and until their initial witness statements had been heard.

One dizzy ginger girl said, ‘I know that guy, he used to live on the estate.’

The bloke she was with said, ‘Trust me, Sharon, you don’t know him.’

‘I bloody well do!’

The guy took her arm and squeezed it hard and said, ‘He works for...’ and he leant over and whispered the rest in ginger’s ear.

Her brow furrowed and she said aloud, ‘Yeah, you’re right, Billy, I was mistaken, never seen the guy before.’

Two

Walter Darriteau had just finished his late meal. He hadn’t been in the house long. Chicken chow mein. Ready meal job, one of the better ones. Ready meals were improving, and not before time, even if they were two to three times more fattening than your traditional meat and two veg. He ambled back to the kitchen. Emptied the detritus, the cardboard cover, the plastic tray, the stained clear top, into the chrome kick bin. His cleaner was coming in the morning and he didn’t want to be dirty and untidy for her.

Galina Unpronounceable was her name, Polish or Byelorussian, or Ukrainian, she was, something like that, one of those eastern European races where Europe thought about becoming Asia. Not an illegal, not our Galina, not working in Walter’s house, no way. That would not have gone down well. He’d seen the proof. He’d seen the papers. Her real surname was full of w’s and z’s and c’s and s’s with nary a vowel in sight. Hopeless to him, he couldn’t begin to say it.

She was a good kid though. Tall and slim and blonde and blue eyed and hardworking, did two straight hours every Saturday morning for a few pennies more than the minimum wage, worked like a maniac when she was in the house, never stopped once, even when Walter begged her to slow down and take a coffee with him.

Let herself in with the key under the stone if he didn’t open the door. When she first came Walter had left cash lying around as bait. Not a thing went missing, not a penny, and he felt guilty afterwards at trying to trap her, but the policeman in him would never go away completely.

She thought Walter was doing her a big favour, and she liked the man, and she liked his house. Couldn’t believe he was a policeman. Laughed her head off when she discovered that. Thought he was joking when he first told her.

‘Really? A black detective, in England? How strange!’

He was thinking of watching a Spike Lee movie. He was thinking of going to bed. Couldn’t decide which. He’d toss a coin. Heads bed, tails tales.

Walter glanced up at his own image reflected back from the new window recently fitted in his kitchen. No one would ever get through that, bragged the salesman, dead locks and steel bolts that went straight into the wall. It had cost him an arm and a leg, but Walter didn’t care about that, just so long as it kept the bloody burglars at bay.

He grabbed a damp cloth and began wiping down the worktops. Strange thing was his house was a lot cleaner than it had been for years, even before Galina came in the morning. Perhaps he was ashamed of inviting a foreigner into a dirty home; perhaps he was trying to impress her.

She was thirty, almost half his age; but he knew it would take more than a gleaming kitchen to impress Galina Unpronounceable.

The old phone in the hallway began ringing.

Who the hell was that at this hour?

An even money bet.

Had to be either a wrong number... or work.

He hoped it would be work.

He always hoped it would be work.

It was indeed work.

Walter liked that, and smiled a smile that no one would ever see.

‘Sorry to bother you,’ said Karen, his sergeant, warily.

‘What are you doing working at this time of night?’

‘Gibbons called me in. It’s only a couple of minutes from my flat.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘There’s been an incident down by the river, The Ship Inn, some guy’s been shot.’

‘Is he on his way to hospital?’

‘Too late for that, Guv. Morgue candidate.’

‘Oh!’ That surprised Walter, and he took a moment out.

She jumped into the vacuum and said, ‘I’m going down there now. Do you want me to pick you up?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Thought so. I’ll see you in five.’

Just enough time to swig some mouthwash and find his shoes and cover the hole in his sock, and slip on a light jacket, and when he went to the front window and peered